As we listened to her story, we thought she had done everything right because she worked with a reputable company. We thought they really did want to provide great service, but the sales staff left out a critical part of the installation process – the installer wouldn’t haul away stained carpet. The customer service staff wanted to help, but our colleague couldn’t reach them on installation day because she got caught in endless voicemail loops. When she finally reached them, customer service couldn’t get in touch with the installer quickly enough to resolve the issue. Our colleague faced a huge expense to find and hire someone else to dispose of the old carpet.

The End of the Story & Critical Solutions

The installers eventually gave in and finished the job, but they trashed the old carpet in a dumpster the homeowners’ association had supplied for a different project. Our colleague faced fines from the HOA for improper use of the dumpster. It’s easy to see why she won’t use this supplier again. But it all could have been avoided.

How? By using text messaging to standardize scheduling, deliver consistent installation tips, and connect customers with customer service and installers quickly. We think text messaging can help you turn a disgruntled customer into a delighted customer. Remember: you can’t help a customer that you can’t reach.

How Can Text Messaging Help You Schedule Installation?

If you sell products or services that need installation, text messages can help you reach your customer wherever they are. Your customers actually prefer texts to emails or phone calls. Consider this:

• Nathan Eddy writes in eWeek, “Over half of [survey] respondents (52 percent) said they would be likely to text with a customer support agent. Similarly, 52 percent would prefer texting customer support more than their current preferred method of communication.”
• Globally, we send more than five billion texts a day – not counting other types of messages – and we open 98 percent of them. Conversely, we only open emails 22 percent of the time, according to Gigaom. Research from Asurion shows that we look at our phones 96 times a day or once every 10 minutes.

Clearly, we like to text and find it helpful in personal interactions. We think the next big business opportunity is to make messaging a regular part of customer support.

Text messages, either SMS or MMS, are versatile. They are immediate because your message goes directly to your customer’s phone. Text messages are brief but they can link to much more information like calendars, web pages, PDFs, videos or podcasts. You can deliver the same critical information about the installation to every customer, every time.

And during the sale, your customer can opt into receiving text messages. You can include it as part of the sales process.

When you set up a new messaging campaign, we recommend that you plan the flow of text messages using both templates and automated delivery. You decide what information your customer needs and in what order – the next text message in the sequence is triggered by the customer’s response to the last text. If you don’t receive a response within a certain time, your system sends a reminder text. If you don’t receive a response or your customer indicates a problem, the issue can be referred to a live customer service rep automatically.

If our colleague’s carpet company had used this type of system, they could have given her options for carpet removal and disposal long before the day of installation. They might have been able to keep a customer.

Let SMS-Magic Help You

We think SMS-Magic can help you eliminate nightmares when you’re scheduling installation for your products. SMS-Magic can help provide a great experience for your customers, too. We offer conversational messaging so that your customers can respond to your texts. If you want to tie into your CRM, we work particularly well with Salesforce and Zoho, but we can help you with many others, and we work with all the messaging apps like Messenger and WhatsApp, so you don’t sacrifice anything to reach your best customers wherever they are!

Contact us to set up a demo or to start your free trial. Let us show you how SMS-Magic can help you end the nightmare of scheduling installations!

Customers want to be heard. But they also want to experience an engagement model tuned to their needs. Text messaging platforms are built to support the modern customer who is mobile and impatient. Messaging allows them to converse from wherever and whenever they choose to engage. Messaging is also a medium they are familiar with, so it’s comfortable and satisfies their need for immediate engagement.

Deloitte predicts that phone calls for customer service will likely fall from today’s 64% of contacts to 47% in 2019. Meanwhile, chat and messaging is expected to grow from 6% to 16%, ahead of both video chat and social media. With less than half of service interactions relying upon phone as the preferred channel for customer service in 2019, it’s time to adapt to what your customers want.

After all, customer experience drives customer choice. Contact center respondents to Deloitte’s survey agree, saying customer experience is predominantly influenced by providing accurate service and information (66%) and by making interactions effortless (62%).

Customer Experience Drives Customer Choice

Conversations with customers are markedly better when the engagement is enhanced by context. One of the things customers dislike most is having to repeat themselves and feeling like an anonymous account to the companies they contact for support. They may remember the experience, but are they remembering for the right reasons?

Converse is the text messaging platform that puts conversations in context. Each conversation is recorded in the customer’s record in your CRM so that customer service agents can quickly access the right conversation and step seamlessly into the conversation as needed—and whether synchronous or asynchronous, over time.

It’s important to remember that customer experience is the customer’s perception based on the outcome of each interaction, conversation, or engagement with your company’s people, products or services. And customers are clearly voting for the ease of a conversation, just not as often over the phone. That’s where conversational messaging comes in. Messaging and chat are replacing phone calls.

Your customers want accurate information via efficient and easy service interactions. Their preferred methods of engagement with family and friends, as well as how and where they shop are habits that work for their lifestyles. Text messaging is fast, efficient and easy. It’s comfortable and allows them to communicate with businesses from wherever they are and whenever the need arises.

In fact, research by NewVoiceMedia found that only 27% of survey respondents said calls are the most effective way to resolve an issue. When the experience—as defined by the customer—is inconvenient or inadequate, they are likely to jump ship. And defection is on the rise with consumers who reported leaving a business due to inadequate customer service jumping from 29% in 2016 to 67% in 2018. That’s $75B in economic value that walked in just the United States.

Move from Cases to Conversations with SMS Tool for Call Centers

Keeping pace with customer expectations means that companies need to consider how they show up in their customers’ lives in a way that provides mutual value. When you think about a “case” – it’s most likely to be a series of disconnected actions by the company and the customer. At least, that’s how customers have reported they feel when interacting with traditional customer service channels.

Yet, when you think about text messaging as a conversation, what you have is a connected set of “turns” or engagement and responses in relation to a customer’s inquiry and resolution of their issue. The beauty of it is that conversational messaging can be synchronous or asynchronous, but it will still be contained in the context of one conversation—easy for both your customer and your agent to follow and continue—without need for repetition.

Part of the resistance by contact centers to conversational messaging is the investment of time that increases costs to serve. The contact center has long been considered an obligation and a cost, rather than a top-line contributor, a focus on reducing costs via reducing average handle time (AHT) has had an adverse impact on customer satisfaction and lifetime value.

However, as first call resolution (FCR) takes precedence—given customers’ demands for accurate, fast and easy service experiences—this is the optimal time to consider adding messaging to your service channels. And the cost trade off will not be as high as you may have estimated.

One of the benefits of using a SMS tool for call centers is that an agent can handle six messaging conversations to one phone call. A combination of automated and human-driven messages can keep the all the conversation moving forward, allowing the agent to spend time in the conversation where she or he is most needed.

In comparison to chat bots that are mostly used for simple inquiries, using messaging that combines automated and human interactions can allow them to tackle more complex cases without needing to ask the customer to change channels. Creating continuous, connected conversations helps customers reach successful outcomes in the use of your products, on an emotional level and in brand affinity.

As to why they prefer texting as a communication channel for business, the top two reasons were convenience and speed of response. Easy to do on a mobile device, they’re familiar with it, and not having to speak to a person directly rounded out the list.

Your customers are your most important asset. If they want texting for customer service, make sure your contact center gives them the option to have it their way. The best part is that texting is not just a benefit for them. An advanced text messaging platform also brings value to your company.

You might also like to know that a recent survey found that 66% of consumers said they’d be willing to pay more for a product or service if it’s supported with a mobile messaging channel.

5 Ways A SMS Tool for Call Centers Improves Customer Service

1. Text messaging ramps up productivity

Messaging enables your agents to handle multiple customer requests simultaneously, increasing their productivity. Serving multiple customers concurrently increases efficiency and responsiveness to customer issues, improving satisfaction and retention or renewal rates. With the ability to see the entire messaging history with a customer, your agents will always have the right context to be relevant and avoid asking them redundant questions. Think of how much your customers’ experience will improve.

2. Texting doesn’t need internet

Your customer and your agent can carry on a conversation over text even in areas where internet service is spotty. This is especially useful if you are in an industry like transportation or agriculture and have customers in remote or rural areas you need to advise a customer about the status of a service appointment.

3. Texting integrates with CRMs

You likely rely on your CRM to keep track of your service interactions with your customers. An advanced SMS tool for call centers with native integration to your CRM makes it easy for your agents to access and quickly remember conversations held with different customers. With text messaging, your customer also has a record of the interaction for easy reference.

This conversational history eliminates the need for a customer to repeat their issue if they interact with various agents if several interactions are required for issue resolution.

4. Messaging automation increases efficiency for agents and satisfaction for customers

You can combine the simplicity of SMS messaging with the sophistication of automation. By sending an automated acknowledgement when a customer texts in an issue, you reassure her that you’re on the job. Once a service interaction has finished, confirm it with an automated text so that you end your exchange on a positive note. Then trigger a survey to gather feedback for continuous improvement. Setting up triggers for automated messages based on case status is simple with an advanced messaging platform.

5. Texting encourages customers to self-service

Gartner has predicted that by 2020, customers will be managing 85% of their relationship with the enterprise without interacting with a human. You can give customers an option to access FAQs by text or walk them through setting up a product via text, by sending them the information they need to enter or using an MMS message to send a video instruction.

Companies have seen reduced call volumes of up to 15% after they implement texting for customer service. Serving customers faster and better is within reach when you choose to offer texting for customer service. Your customers will thank you.

In Summary

Customers prefer short, interactive, and mobile-friendly communications. Texting fits the bill. It’s quick, intuitive, and is their preferred channel for customer-to-business communication. Messaging also makes sense for your business, as it boosts your agents’ productivity and reduces their workload through self-service and lower call volumes.

Given the fickleness of consumers and the low cost of switching brands, companies large and small can take advantage of SMS messaging to grow their business.

3 Reasons Your Customers Will Thank You

1. They’ll think you “get” them.

Customers want to be understood and appreciated by the companies they choose to do business with. They hate waiting and they don’t want to have to explain themselves again and again as they move from one agent to another to resolve an issue.

Automated messaging flows can be set up to answer FAQs instantly in response to a customer texting a keyword to trigger the answer. A standard HELP keyword can be routed to the next open agent to respond directly to the customer via text while an automated response is asking for the customer to explain their issue. Your agent steps in seamlessly and your customer is overjoyed at your in-the-moment responsiveness.

Advanced messaging platforms also help you meet these needs by archiving every message exchanged with a customer so that they’ll never have to explain their issue again. Even if a different agent must step in, they’ll be up to speed in seconds by glancing through the conversational history with the customer.

2. Messaging gives your customers more control than online chat, phone or email.

Online chat has taken off for customer service, but there’s a problem. Once the chat is over, so is your customer’s access to the information shared. When you use messaging, the customer has a record of your exchange in the messaging app on their phone. This way, if the agent has shared any links or instructions, the customer can refer back to them as needed. They can also choose when to delete the message thread, putting them in control of their issue resolution.

If they find they need additional help, they can send another text and it will be archived in the same conversational thread, making it convenient to see all the information in one place—for your agents and for them. If they returned to an online chat, it would start a new session which may or may not be connected to any past inquiries about the issue that needs to be resolved.

3. Communication is foundational for customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Keeping your customers informed about the status of their resolution of a complex issue is of the utmost importance in keeping frustration at bay. Text messages can be automated to send a status update that lets them know where the issue is in the resolution. If your company needs to send out a service technician, a message can be sent informing your customer the name of the technician and what time he or she will arrive. Yes, SMS messages could put an end to the dreaded 4-hour service window.

Messaging also offers an easy way for you to get additional information needed to resolve a customer’s issue. Simply text the question and you should receive a reply within minutes due to the responsiveness to messaging by consumers. This results in customers knowing that you’re actively working on their issue, as well as shorter time to resolution—and that means happier customers.

SMS for Customer Service is Smart Business

SMS texting hasn’t become the most used function on a mobile phone because it’s difficult. It’s native to mobile phones and always within arm’s reach. It’s concise and immediate and many of your customers grew up using it to communicate with friends and family. They’re now telling companies that it’s their preferred communication with brands, as well.

As with any channel, there are best-use applications for it and times when an alternative channel is better suited to serve your customers. If you’re unsure if texting is a preferred channel for your customers, have your agents start asking them if they’d be open to using SMS for customer service. Giving customers what they want is definitely smart business.

What’s interesting is, if a majority of organizations have enabled digital channels for customer service successfully, why in this research were only 5.4% of the service interactions consumers had recently resolved over digital or messaging channels?

Are companies not truly implementing these channels? Or, perhaps they’re not making it easy for their customers to find and use them?

This may be the answer:

Expectations about the responsiveness of digital and messaging channels changes dramatically from those for service interactions conducted over the phone.

Where 30 minutes seems to be the breaking point for response via phone call, over 50% of consumers surveyed expect a response on a digital or messaging channel within 5 minutes.

However, the research also found that 78% of respondents are willing to wait longer for a response from a messaging channel if their query is acknowledged. The reason 51% stated was that they wouldn’t be tied to a phone call, so there’d be no wait time. Not having to talk to an agent or needing to navigate multiple menu options were additional reasons stated by more than a quarter of consumers.

This indicates the overwhelming desire for low-effort, low-friction service interactions. It’s also an indication of how much consumers value their time. Not only that; 68% of consumers who used a messaging channel to contact a business preferred it to using either phone or email.

Contact Centers Meet Sky-High Expectations with SMS Messages

Text messaging platforms enable your contact center to instantly acknowledge a service query via automated text. This means you can easily satisfy that 78% who are willing to wait once you’ve acknowledged them.

Using messaging channels for customer service also satisfies those who prefer not to speak with an agent or navigate multiple menu options.

The use of messaging channels for customer service is simple for your customers.

Here’s how it works:

You publish a keyword and short code for customer service requests, such as:

“Text SERVICE to 123456” with your service inquiry.”

Once a customer texts the keyword, your text messaging platform automatically creates a service case then triggers to send a response telling them their query was received and the case number, with an instruction to ask a question or get the status of their case. Text-to-case is a fast and highly responsive way to manage service cases.

“Thanks for your inquiry. Your case # is 109678J. We’ll update you on progress. To get status updates or ask a question, just reply to this message. ABC Company”

Because text messaging is asynchronous, all the messages related to the customer’s inquiry will appear in the message conversation on your customers’ mobile phone.   All message interactions in the conversation are also attached to the customer’s record and case within the CRM. This makes getting service super easy as they don’t have to remember their case number, find your email address or jump through hoops to get their issue addressed.

Agents Use A SMS Tool for Contact Centers to Reduce Customer Effort

Messaging isn’t just easy and frictionless for your customers. It makes your customer service agents’ jobs easier and helps them work more productively to meet your customers’ soaring expectations.

Once the service case has been created in your CRM, the case is routed to the appropriate agent who receives an alert for the new query.

The agent can reply to your customer and ask a question, provide a status update, or notify them their issue has been resolved. If it takes longer to resolve an issue and shifts change, the next agent on duty can see the entire conversational case history so they can easily continue to complete the case resolution and keep your customer in the loop.

Intelligent agent desks also create prioritized worklists within your service desk, so your agents know which cases need responses and they can always quickly find any specific case through contextual filtering.

The Bottom Line

Using a sms tool for contact centers means your contact center can not only keep up with your customers’ expectations but will result in more satisfying experiences that drive higher loyalty and lifetime value.

According to the report, the most important aspects of a good customer service experience are getting the issue resolved in a single interaction and knowledgeable agents. It follows that the most frustrating aspect of a poor customer service experience are agents who lack knowledge and the ability to resolve the issue along with the customer being asked to repeat information multiple times.

Customer experience is gaining in prominence over both product and price in terms of customer satisfaction and loyalty. However, Dimension Data reports that nearly 80% of contact centers say their current customer service systems won’t meet their future needs.

As customer preferences change and reliance on mobile devices grows, incorporating text messaging for customer service can help you gain the “big-picture view” of your customer’s history with your company enabling better, faster service. Since Forrester Research finds that 77% of people say that valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide them with good service, messaging should be on your short list to reduce customer effort.

7 Reasons a SMS Tool For Call Centers Improves CX

Speed to Resolution
A SMS tool for call centers is designed to allow agents to engage in messaging conversations with more than one customer at a time. Traditional phone call resolution requires agents to work on one customer call at a time.

Reduce Costs
An SMS text message can be up to 600% less expensive than a phone call and the ability to handle more customer conversations simultaneously boosts agent productivity to handle a higher volume of service requests with the same headcount.

Increase Responsiveness
Customers say waiting on the phone for an agent is one of the most frustrating parts of the customer service experience. Intelligent text messaging can combine automated and 1:1 messages to instantly respond to your customers—removing that frustration.

Knowledgeable Agents
Customers are also frustrated by having to repeat information to agents. An intelligent text messaging platform records the entire conversation of what’s said by both parties. Because text messaging conversations are asynchronous, if the conversation takes longer and a new agent must respond, all the information about the customer’s history is on the screen providing the big-picture view that enables them to respond in context, on the spot, and within that single conversation.

Incorporate Voice of Customer
Nearly 90% of consumers have a more favorable view of brands that give them the opportunity to provide feedback. However, 37% of customers say they’re only asked occasionally for their thoughts. Text messaging for customer service gives you the opportunity to solicit feedback during or after every service conversation. This can be as simple as an NPS survey or as comprehensive as asking open-ended questions to understand their feedback in context—whether automated or exchanged 1:1 between the agent and customer.

Easily Promote Self-Service
Many contact centers are reducing call volume by providing self-service options via a website or portal to help customers resolve their issues themselves. However, sometimes this can be frustrating to customers who must sift through a lot of information to find the answer to their question. An agent in a texting conversation can send the customer a link directing them to just the information they need, instantly, reducing their effort.

Provide Proactive Service
The automated workflows provided by an intelligent text messaging platform can also allow your contact center to provide proactive outreach based on triggered alerts. These could be set to notify customers of product or policy updates, upcoming renewals, newly available products that complement products they already own, and more.

The Bottom Line

Reducing customer effort is paramount for improving customer experience. While this means doing so across the customer lifecycle, a reduction in effort to obtain customer service is a great focus that will payoff for your company.

Customer experience is becoming table stakes for every company. And today that means instant and on-demand. Text messaging for customer service and using a SMS tool for call centers delivers that in a convenient and low-friction manner that will delight your customers and show them how much you value their satisfaction and loyalty.

SMS messages offer the fastest time-to-response of any communication channel. The majority of customers prefer messaging to any other customer service channel, primarily because it eliminates the frustrations of being on hold while waiting for agents to respond.

Responding quickly to a customer requesting support is a powerful way to soothe problem situations and show you care, providing a boost to customer satisfaction.

Text messaging empowers service organizations to do just that.

3 Ways SMS Messages Speed Customer Responses

1. Instantly confirm service requests. SMS messages can automatically send a response that confirms you’re paying attention, as soon as your customer submits a question or a ticket. You can immediately let them know that you’ve received their request, introduce the agent that will be handling their case and set their expectations about when they can expect a follow-up contact. And you can do all of that before a human agent can even answer the call.

2. Automate the queue. The submission of the service request can also notify the agent or agents who will be providing support that a new request has been submitted. They can then quickly review the request and begin moving resolution forward. While they do that, your customer will already know you’re on it thanks to your quick response.

3. Use messaging to drive self-service. It’s also easy to automate responses to the most common issues, such as a password reset or locating a user manual. By providing ways for your customers to quickly resolve simple issues through self-help resources, their problem is solved, and more tickets are closed without direct intervention with a support agent.Should a customer reply HELP, an agent receives an automated alert and can immediately respond to the message to resolve your customer’s issue.

The Bottom Line

These three examples are only the start to how SMS messages can help your customer service agents shorten time-to-response at the critical moments in your customer relationships.

Messaging is an intuitive conversational medium your customers use every day. When you ask your customers about their experiences, their perceptions, and their needs in a natural way, they’re more likely to respond. You’re also more likely to capture honest feedback when you survey customers in a conversational way.

SMS-Magic messaging makes surveys simple to deliver and convenient for your customers’ response. The options for surveys are limitless.  For example:

Send an immediate simple survey that lets them rate you, and/or comment on their current experience.

Since you can ask questions immediately after a customer service experience, you’ll get a fresh perspective into the quality of care you’re delivering to your customers. Asking questions also makes your customers feel more appreciated and heard.

This is especially important given research that finds only 1 in 5 members of a loyalty program feel special and recognized by brand representatives.

You can automatically message them with brief surveys after every interaction, after a service ticket closes, or any combination that works for your needs.

Please note that the blue messages are automated workflows and the yellow messages are manual replies from your customer or from the SMS-Magic user stepping in to respond personally.

Survey responses are immediately included in the customer’s record and archived for future needs.

SMS-Magic can accommodate the type of satisfaction or rating that your company wants – for example, NPS, Satisfaction, or Effort score.

Send surveys at different points in time (as part of a workflow) or whenever you want (ad hoc and personal) to capture insights into your customers for feedback on service, on their experience with your products, or anything else you’d like to know.

You can send surveys following a product’s arrival or installation, after a time period to gather user satisfaction metrics, after customer service calls or at ad hoc periods when you want to gather feedback from your customer base.

All customer responses are included in the 360-degree conversational history within the customer’s record, so your agents can review history at any time.

The data is also collected and archived within the unique Contact record in your CRM or database. You can analyze responses to find trends and insights into what’s working and what’s not with your product, your implementation and your service operations.

The Bottom Line

Your customers feel more appreciated and heard when you use conversational messaging from SMS-Magic to ask for their feedback and insights. You can also improve your own service delivery, product offerings and overall customer loyalty when you ask the right questions.

SMS-Magic empowers limitless types of questions and surveys. Examples include:

• Simple NPS surveys after each service experience or contact.
• Ratings for service satisfaction, products or other customer insights.
• Automated surveys with keywords that trigger personal 1:1 agent follow up
• Multi-question surveys delivered as links through messages.
• Ongoing touch points with customers to show you care.

You’ll increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, even as you gather valuable insights to further increase your own competitive advantage.

A message-enabled loyalty program can change this. Research conducted by C3Interactive found that 9 in 10 consumers prefer to interact with a brand’s loyalty program via text message. In fact, the study found that 64% of brands reported an increase in loyalty program membership and attributed it to the addition of mobile components, such as messaging.

Brands also reported that 27% of loyalty communications were experienced via SMS. While you may think that dividends, such as rewards and earning points are the highlights of a loyalty program, experience with the program was rated by consumers as the highest driver.

Take a look at the top five drivers of consumer satisfaction with loyalty programs and you’ll see four are based on experience rather than dividends.

1. Program meets needs
2. Enjoy participating in the program
3. Program makes brand experience better
4. Ease of redemption
5. Program consistent with brand expectations

Create a Message-Enabled Loyalty Program Focused on Better Experiences

1. Use Status Update Messages

Research also finds that anticipation of redemption is just as satisfying as redeeming the reward. But 57% of Members admitted they had no idea of their points or what they could do with them.

• Send periodic messages that update Members about their point balance
• Include a teaser about how close they are to reaching the next tier—and why that’s relevant to them

2. Help Them Set a Redemption Goal

Thirty-four percent of Members admitted they also did not have a redemption goal. With no intended use for their accumulating points, satisfaction with the loyalty program dropped to 43% for these Members.

• Use texting to survey them about what they want from a loyalty program and use those insights to craft new text messages that suggest redemption goals based on their preferences
• Get them to declare a redemption goal and send them messages with tips on how to reach it—as well as kudos for each activity that brings them closer to reaching it

3. Maintain Engagement After Redemption

Surprisingly, Members are most vulnerable to attrition after redeeming a reward. Receiving the reward can literally be a let-down which means you need a messaging plan to keep them engaged and get them to begin anticipating their next redemption goal.

• Congratulate them on their redemption and include a request for feedback in your message
• Send a message with tips or a link to content on how to get even more value from the reward/product they redeemed and/or complementary products they may also enjoy
• Help them set their next redemption goal

Customer experience is critical to customer loyalty and longevity. A message-enabled loyalty program allows you to be more responsive and relevant by incorporating personal details and addressing known preferences.

The Bottom Line

A messaging automation platform, integrated with your CRM provides a 360 degree conversational history of all incoming and outgoing messages giving you greater insights into what engages and drives repeat customer purchases and loyalty. By focusing your loyalty program on messages that drive improved experiences, it’s also possible to compete against other brand programs that offer richer dividends. Since 76% of Members agree that the program is part of their relationship with the brand, it’s a solid goal to prioritize improving your customers’ experience with messaging.

^[1] The Loyalty Report 2017
http://info.bondbrandloyalty.com/2017-loyalty-report